Tag / crowd

Sometimes I like to add the sound of thousands of screaming fans into my recordings. You can find Creative Commons licensed large crowd samples online at the Free Sound Project. Another great place to search is SugarMegs which is a huge archive of free, legal concert recordings. Be sure that there’s no music playing even softly in the background or you risk the possibility of being outed as faker. If possible grab a section of pure crowd that’s long enough to fill the section of your own song in which your placing it because properly looping audience noise can be tricky.

A fun example of a fake crowd placed into a techno track is Slaves to the Rave by the Inferno Bros:

Sometimes I like to start a track with the large crowd fading in. Next I will add a single kick with a ton of reverb on it creating a boom. I then automated the crowd’s volume envelope to jump up after the boom sound creating the effect that the audience is reacting excitedly. I also use this triangular looking volume curve after a few opening screaming vocal sentences. With some careful placement and tweaking the end result kind be quite realistic.

On the other hand experimenting and creating something wild out of the crowd noise also can work. I’ve pitch shifted, flanged and “trance gated” crowd sounds into really worthwhile parts.